Deland Bypass Route Facing New Roadblock

December 19, 1986|By Rick Tonyan of The Sentinel Staff

DELAND — Alternate routes for extending U.S. Highway 92 -- proposed in hopes of keeping the road from running through the middle of a shopping center -- would run through the planned site of another center, Volusia County Council members and administrators have learned.

Discovery of plans for a shopping center on the northeastern side of the intersection of U.S. highways 92 and 17 have become another in a long series of stumbling blocks in the county's effort to extend the road and create a bypass around DeLand, council members and administators say.

If council members follow earlier plans and extend the road west of the intersection, it would run between the Wal-Mart and Walgreens stores of the Gateway Village Shopping Center.

Council members told administrators last month to study two alternatives, both of which would veer off U.S. 92 at the new Hilton Hotel. One path would curve near Gateway; another would steer around the center and go through wetlands near Lake Gertie.

Either route would take a large chunk of a proposed shopping center on 22 acres annexed by DeLand several weeks ago. It means that no matter what alternative is selected, the county would have to pay for expensive commercial property.

Developers of either center said they do not want to sell and will fight having the road pushed through their property. Steering the extension to avoid both centers would run the road through residential areas and council members said they do not want to disrupt those neighborhoods.

Susan Daniels, a real estate broker with Jundt Associates Inc., West Palm Beach, developer of the center on the northeastern side of the intersection, said the alternatve routes would run through several of the project's planned buildings. She advocated using the straight route through Gateway.

If the county leaves the land alone, the new center should open in the fall of 1987, Daniels said.

Gateway developer Duncan Liles III of Montgomery, Ala., said his project was developed first so the council should favor it over a proposed center. The center has a 100-foot-wide gap between the Wal-Mart and Walgreens stores that could be used for the extension, county administrators said.

Liles said the gap is for an access road to apartments he intends to build behind the center. He said the gap is not wide enough to extend U.S. 92 and predicted that some of the buildings in the center would have to be destroyed. Council members last month backed off plans for building the road through Liles' property because they said they feared a traffic hazard would result, with pedestrians trying to cross the highway to get to stores.

Engineering estimates have indicated that running the highway through Liles' center would be the least expensive alternative and would cost slightly less than $3.5 million. One alternate through the northeastern side of the intersection would cost about $3.9 million and the other about $3.7 million.

In 1984 council members killed earlier plans for the extension that would have put the road near residential neighborhoods. The council revived the project last year.

The council on Jan. 22 is supposed to decide whether to select an alternative and keep the project alive. If it is ever built, the extension would connect U.S. 92 with State Road 15A west of DeLand to relieve traffic congestion downtown.